three jewels
by Verity
Summary: Buffy explores what it means to let go. Oz is still there. Set in Season 8; a rewrite of "Retreat."


**Title:** Three Jewels  
**Summary:** Buffy explores what it means to let go. Oz is still there. Set in Season 8; a rewrite of "Retreat."  
**Disclaimer:** It all belongs to Joss and Dark Horse.  
**For:** The lovely Emmie (**angearia**)  
**Thanks:** to **penny_lane_42** & **pennydrdful**, my amazing and sneaky betas, who were very kind to work on this surprise for Emmie with me.  
**Comments:** This started out as a simple response to **angearia**'s request for me to write Buffy/Oz (which this isn't quite), but quickly grew to a broader scope. This is more intended to be a response to the "Retreat" arc and all the Mighty Whitey therein than it is to be shippy.

* * *

It's full dark by the time the girls are off the submarine and settled in at Oz's home. Buffy goes out to the front porch to sit, and Bay brings her a cup of butter tea. "Thank you," she says automatically, then shakes herself loose from the weight of the day. "_Thank_ you," she repeats, this time meeting Bay's eyes.

"You, too, are struggling with a wildness within," Bay replies evenly.

They rest for a while, looking out over the mountains. Buffy lets her legs dangle over the edge of the porch, while Bay folds hers before her into what is clearly a familiar position.

"We shouldn't be here," Buffy says, after a while.

"This is not your place," her hostess agrees. "We are a refuge, but we should not have been yours." She sighs. "Let us not take not take trouble from tomorrow. The night is a time for stillness. We should try to be still with it."

Buffy laughs, and Bay smiles faintly. By the light of the waning moon, Buffy studies her. She knows, from their exchange earlier, that Bay is a year or two younger than her, and took charge of her community when she was younger still. Her hair is dark and shiny, pulled back into a long braid, but there are wrinkles already at the corners of her eyes. She has a husband, who hovered attentively at her elbow when Buffy arrived this afternoon, and a small daughter, who clung shyly to her skirts. Buffy wants to envy her, but she's too tired to feel anything, and, abruptly, exhausted. She slumps against a pillar.

When Bay goes in, she puts a blanket over Buffy's shoulders. But she does not comfort her.

* * *

The next morning, Buffy is bleary-eyed at breakfast, but that's nothing new. Oz sits down across from her at the end of the long wooden table, crowded with Slayers and other people who used to go bump in the night. Buffy is dangerously close to dozing off into her soft-boiled egg when the bench moves under her and she startles, snapping upright. She tries to catch her breath; she's adjusting poorly to changing her default combat setting to "flight."

When she's steadied herself, she looks up to find Oz studying her calmly. Oh, Oz. Buffy musters up a smile.

"Finish eating," he says, "I'll still be here when you're done."

But she's swept away with her plate still half-full, Willow and Giles and Kennedy and Dawn all tugging her back and forth at once. Bay sends everyone out into the fields, which spreads them out widely, giving Buffy some temporary relief. She finds herself moving rocks with Faith; by lunch, her thighs are quaking with exhaustion.

Oz is waiting for her under the tree, with that same easy demeanor. "Still here," he says.

* * *

It's days before they actually talk; long, long days. Buffy collapses into bed at night and sleeps dreamlessly until she rises again at dawn. The exhaustion of hard labor is its own reward: there's nothing ahead of her but dirt and earth and the tender beginnings of spring, with Faith complaining loudly the whole way. Something is changing in her, though, as her power ebbs. One day, Buffy leans against a particularly stubborn boulder and takes a swig of water from her canteen; she closes her eyes and lifts her face up to the sun. Abruptly, she feels an overpowering rush of affection for Faith, who's cursing at her stubbed toe, Tibet, and life in general. Faith mistakes her sudden tears for injury, but Buffy waves her off and they stand there awkwardly for a few minutes.

"I've got a real flask up at the house," Faith offers, gesturing in that direction.

Buffy shakes her head. "Dehydrating." She dusts off her palms on her once immaculate jeans, which, at this point, have seen a lot worse. "Let's break for a while."

"I gotta pee," Faith says, which is as close as she'll come to agreeing when her pride is at stake.

Back at the ranch, Oz is sitting on the porch, playing a clapping game with Sangmu, Bay's daughter. At first, Buffy was frustrated that Oz did not join them in their work, but she's come to understand the place he inhabits here, and that while he is a link, he will never be a bridge. "Come play with us?" he asks her, now, and Buffy acquiesces.

At first, Sangmu hides behind her playmate, but eventually she approaches Buffy, and patty-cakes with her, too. Buffy can't remember the last time she heard a child laugh, or the last time she laughed without bitterness. She looks up to see Oz looking at her, and knows that he knows this about her, too.

Bay calls Sangmu in after a while, and Buffy leans back against the same pillar she'd huddled against her first night. Her muscles refuse to relax along with her, though. When Oz reaches over to rub her back, she's surprised, but doesn't protest. Under his touch, she feels like she's dissolving under a pleasant pile of goo.

How long has it been since someone touched her this way, with affection, without expectation?

She seems to be crying a lot, lately.

"I miss my mom," Buffy says, feeling pathetic.

Oz lets go, and inches forward to sit next to her. Now his legs are dangling free, her own pulled up against her. "I liked her."

"I know." The sun is beginning to set, and the world before her looks like something out of _National Geographic_, which her mom used to keep in the bathroom. Buffy's still crying, and she knows that her nose is all red and her face puffy; it always gets that way when she cries. It seems stupid, how much she cares. "I'm sorry I brought everybody here. I wasn't thinking about you. I wasn't thinking about anybody. I just didn't want any more people to die. People keep dying, and it's not _fair_."

"Pretty much," Oz agrees. She's grateful that he doesn't try to sugarcoat it, or make her feel better.

Suddenly, it hits her like a knife to the gut, and Buffy almost doubles over with the intensity of the anger washing over her. "I want _them_ to die, I want _him_ to die, Twilight," she gasps. "And it's _horrible!_ and _wrong!_ and I don't know what to do or how not to feel this way." She's so ashamed. In that moment, she wants to die herself.

Oz is sanguine as ever. It's funny how she can read his face, or can't; she's always thought him so calm, but she sees now that his unruffled appearance is deceptive, his currents moving deep beneath the surface. Now he nods, but doesn't speak. Buffy leans forward and buries her face in her hands. He touches a hand to her cheek, briefly.

Someone is ringing the bell for dinner, and she fights a surge of resentment that threatens to choke her. Everything is moving, always moving, even in this place; she wants so desperately to stay still.

Oz touches her shoulder once, and rises. Buffy takes a few minutes to collect herself before she goes in.

* * *

"Why here?" she asks Oz the next night, on the porch after the stars have risen and almost everyone has gone to bed. "Why not us?"

"You can have peace, too, you know," he says gently. "But you have to choose it. Even now, you're not choosing it. You can't, I know." He's sitting the way Bay sat the first night, his legs crossed in front of him; he looks like he should be saying _ommmmmmmmmmmmmm_ and doing something complicated with his hands.

"That doesn't make any sense," Buffy objects. She has her hair draped over her shoulder, and she's braiding it tightly, like Bay does. The ends are shiny and pale in the moonlight, although she realizes that by now she must have terrible roots.

Oz takes the braid from her and finishes it off, tying the end tightly with the leather cord Bay gave her. "You have to think about it." She can't see his face, only his side in her shadow out of the corner of his eye.

"I don't have time." Buffy fiddles with the laces of her sneakers.

He lets go of her braid, and she leans back to see him. Oz smiles sadly. "True."

Right now, she seems to feel everything intensely, not least that she wants him, or some part of him, the part that is patient and steady like the earth, the part which pulls her back into life. When she moves to kiss him, he takes her arm and stops her, although he doesn't pull away. "I know," she says, miserably.

"No, you don't." Buffy looks at him, surprised; she's so rarely heard him angry, or what passes for angry for Oz: focused, intent, direct. "You deserve to be loved. But I've made my choice. I'm sorry."

In that moment, she loves him. She loves him because she can feel the depth of her love, how deep it is, how broad it goes. She can feel Faith, Dawnie, Willow, Xander, Giles; they're all in her heart. Even, she discovers, a powerful love for the girls.

"Don't say it," he says. "Keep it for them."

* * *

The new moon is high over them in the great room, where Buffy has helped Willow unroll most of the scrolls under the weak lamplight. "What else are we going to do?" her best friend is asking, without really expecting an answer. "Why, Goddess, why did we _do_ this, it was stupid and pointless, and it's not going to help after all anyway. I can't do _anything_." Buffy's head hurts. She can't take in any more of this magic mumbo-jumbo, even if Willow does the heavy work of translation.

But she has to stay awake, has to keep Willow focused. "I have to call on the Goddesses of Bon," Willow says, frowning and bringing one of the scrolls closer to the light. "There's just no other way. We need something big."

"Do it," Buffy tells her absently. She's not thinking of Willow now, but of Bay and her family, and how they have taken her peace, and will steal her gods and goddesses in turn. It doesn't seem right, that they should do this. What if this is the thing that will turn Willow evil? What if Willow is already lost? She shoots her friend a sidelong glance, which Willow returns a few moments later. Buffy looks away when Willow tries to catch her eye.

There was a time to talk about it, but it's gone now. Willow gets to her feet, gathering up her notes from the scattered papers that litter the floor. Buffy begins to pick up the scrolls, but Willow shakes her head and takes Buffy by the hand. "No time for that. We gotta go."

* * *

The last time she sees him, Oz is kneeling next to Sangmu, pressing down on the wound in her abdomen. Everything in Buffy's heart flattens out again; the world seems to move in slow motion, slower than the little girl's breaths.

"Don't say it," he says again. "Do what you have to do."

She longs for that moment, when she felt lighter than air.


End file.
